An interesting exhibition “East London Mornings” starts today at Hackney’s popular café, Mouse & De Lotz. This project is featuring 20 illustrations of East London’s top cafés by UK and international artists. Ms Katya Katkova, who is a Hackney based photographer and an owner of café blog “East London Mornings“, has started the project “East London Mornings“, with the aim of collecting paintings and drawings of local cafés. Each artist has contributed by rendering one of their favourite local eateries in a style suited to the place. The ultimate goal of the project is to publish an art guide to the best Hackney morning spots (see more on Hackney Citizen article). The host, Mouse & De Lotz, furnished in antique & cosy interior, is the perfect place for this small and lovely exhibition, and worth to visit even with its inconvenient location for non-Hackney residents.

Brick Lane has established its name as a major tourist destination in East London. Known as Banglatown, the south half of the street is occupied by Bangladesh curry restaurants, and the north half with hip bars, restaurants, cafés, shops and galleries attract trendy young people. A little street off the midst of Brick Lane to the East, ﻿Cheshire Street﻿ is home to independent shops selling interior & home products, jewelry, vintage clothing, and other bric-a-brac. This quiet street bustles on weekend with people looking for something original and unique that is hard to find anywhere else.

Many stores have already decorated for Christmas in London, and a group of Cheshire street stores also organizes an annual late night Christmas shopping evenings on two Thursdays on December 2nd and 9th, from 6pm to 9pm. Drink will be served. It would be a great opportunity if you are looking for special Christmas gift. Participated stores are as follows ↓

東ロンドンのショーディッチのLeonard Streetに最近できた、カフェ／バー／レストラン、The Book Club。バー／クラブ・Queen of Hoxtonと同じオーナーが経営、以前はHOMEというバーだったビクトリア時代の倉庫があった建物にある。元倉庫のレンガ壁と広々としたスペースを生かした、2階に分かれたフロアは、ビンテージ風の家具や長テーブルが置かれ、地階にはビリヤード台、1階には卓球台が置いてある小部屋もある。また、トークやワークショップ等の文化イベントも開催されており、週末等にはDJも入る（イベントスケジュールはこちら）。客層は場所柄、デザイン事務所やファッション、メディア等で働くクリエーターや、ヒップな若者が多い。Wi-Fiは無料、プライベート・ミーティングルームや映写施設もある。ちなみにイギリスでは、カフェやパブで、一般客に混じってビジネス・ミーティングをしているのをよく見かける。テーブルが小さかったり、うるさい場所でもやってるので、気が散らないのだろうかといつも思う。

The Book Club is a recently opened café/Bar/Restaurant, located on Leonard Street in a former Victorian warehouse (where used to be the HOME bar) in Shoreditch, East London. Run by the same people as the Queen of Hoxton, this former warehouse with brick walls and vast 2-floor spaces is decorated with vintage-style furniture and long tables, and has a pool table and a DJ area downstairs and a ping-pong table in a small room on the corner of the ground floor. The Book Club also offers a variety of creative and cultural events as well as parties and DJ nights (event schedules are here), and attracts creative workers and hip twenty-somethings who live or work around the area. Wi-Fi is free, and you can also use private meeting rooms and screening facilities. I often see people having a business meeting in a café or a pub in UK and always wonder if they are not distracted: sometimes it is noisy and a table is too small to spread documents.

The Book Club opens all day from 8 am to midnight (until 2 am on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays), and the menu changes accordingly. In the evening, diners pay by plate size and large groups can purchase huge pots of pasta or stew. We ordered Spaghetti with Italian Meatballs and Bangers&Mash for our late lunch. Bangers&Mash is not bad, and spicy tomato sauce for the pasta was good, but disappointment was the spaghetti – it was a cheap kind and mushy + far away from al dente…

About 10 minutes walk from the Old street tube station, you see many Vietnamese restaurants on the south part of Kingsland Road in Hackney, between the intersection with Old street and the Jeffrye Museum. In contrast to hip and edgy atmosphere of nearby Hoxton, Kingsland road is less lively and desolated, and many Vietnamese restaurants there are cheap and authentic but not the coolest ones in town. Among many Vietnamese in the area, such as Song Que (popular with its Phở noodle soup), Viet Hoa (with hight reputation), or Loong Kee (my friend’s favorite. cheap & yummy), Viet Grill may be the place for you, if you are interested in design and trend in London. Recently renovated Viet Grill is a sister restaurant of popular Cay Tre on Old street . The interiors with dark wood furniture and exotic wallpaper is a fusion of oriental taste and modernity, and quite stylish, in compare with the other Vietnamese restaurants on the same street. The restaurant is pretty big and there are also tables downstairs, so it is perfect for a big party as well. The picture above is taken on Sunday afternoon after lunch time and you don’t see many people, but it could be pretty busy at dinner time. The food is decent, but our favorite Vietnamese dish, Phở, was a bit disappointing — too salty or maybe they used too much MSG (?), and we were quite thirsty after the meal. We still can’t find the perfect Phở in London! Ironically, when we went to Atlanta Georgia, we had excellent Phở and ‘world-international-city’ London should be able to offer the same level (!!). In UK, many people believe that MSG is harmful for your health, and you see the sign ‘no MSG’ at the storefront of some Asian restaurants — M is one of them — and he always checks the labels (and always complains) when we shop at an Oriental-Asian foods store — it’s a ‘pain’ sometimes because I can’t buy what I want!